Steven E. Hines writes,
“Slavery was and is an abomination to the idea of justice and individual rights. Lincoln, or anyone else, would have been right to have put it down with whatever force was necessary to do so.” Why couldn’t you have said that, Tim? If Lincoln had just put down slavery with as much force as was necessary to do the job, and no more, wouldn’t that have been good enough for you? Why drag the issue of secession into the mix? Secession is a natural right of individuals. To say that it was and is illegal and that anyone is right to put it down with force is about as authoritarian as it gets.
First, secession is actually critical to the argument. If secession is, in fact, a legal right of the states, then the south was right in the Civil War, and Lincoln had no legitimate authority to use force against the seceding states, regardless of their reasons for seceding. End of story. Consider: I have the right to drink alcohol; thus even if drunkenness is an evil, I still have the legal right to drink to excess. In the same way, if states do have the constitutional authority to secede, then that would resolve the question without any need to address the evils of slavery. As I explain in this article, it is the fact that secession is illegal under any and all circumstances that makes it necessary for us to then ask whether the Confederacy was nevertheless engaged in a legitimate act of revolution when it broke the law in 1861 by purporting to leave the union, and of course it was not.
Second, perhaps Mr. Hines mistyped, but secession is not a right of individuals at all—not even its advocates claim this. It is alleged to be a right of governments. Secession is the idea that political units have the lawful authority, consistent with the Constitution, to leave the union unilaterally. Because it is illegal, it is the duty of the president to put a stop to it, by force if necessary. It’s a simple syllogism: (1) the president has the duty to “see that the laws be faithfully executed,” with force if necessary; (2) secession violates the law (i.e., the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land); (3) therefore, the president has the duty to put down secession, with force, if necessary.
Third, while I agree that slavery was and is an abomination, and anyone would indeed have been morally right to put it down with whatever force was necessary to do so, that doesn’t answer the constitutional or legal question. The Constitution, after all, did include certain protections for slave property and state autonomy that made it illegal for the Lincoln Administration simply to use force to abolish slavery. Lincoln certainly hated slavery and would have liked to wish it all away, but, mindful of the limits of his legal authority, he did not try to merely abolish it by fiat; he sought a peaceful way of gradually ending slavery, just as other countries had found. The south refused to allow that to happen, and initiated force rather than see slavery put in the course of ultimate, peaceful extinction. But had things happened differently—for example, had the slaves risen up against their masters, as they did at times—that would have been a morally justified act of revolution: that is, an overthrowing of the lawful order in defense of individual rights. That’s just why Jefferson said that he trembled for his country when reflecting that God is just, and his justice could not sleep forever. (Check out this excellent article on that subject.)
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